Avatar Program
in the Avatar Program.]] The Avatar Program enables humans to explore the remote and hostile environment of Pandora without endangering human life. Essentially the technique is similar to the use of remotely operated robotic vehicles for exploration; however the Avatar Program uses a biological human/Na'vi hybrid body specifically engineered for operation in the Pandoran environment. The operator is able to use the avatar body as if it were his or her own, enhancing freedom of movement and increasing work output. Origins Under strong pressure from the UN, scientists and the general public, the RDA agreed to set up a program to enhance communications between humans and Na’vi. At first, this consisted solely of an Indigenous Terrain program to study Na’vi culture and language and to attempt to establish communication between man and Na’vi. Practical difficulties soon showed a need for a more profound means of communication between the human and Na’vi species. Invention / Technology RDA research had already established the possibility of direct mental communication between humans, and RDA scientist Dr. Cordell Lovecraft was given the task of carrying his “Dark Dreamer” project, which sought to transmit mental processes – “thoughts” – to humans at a distance, as well as interspecies mental communication. Initial dissection of Na’vi specimens found that although the Na’vi show a surprising degree of external parallel evolution, their internal anatomy and metabolic processes were substantially different from that of humans. The Na’vi brain in particular, with its external neural queue and three-lobed cerebral structure, proved a daunting obstacle. Building on work with brain-wiped primates and condemned criminals, Dr. Lovecraft was able to demonstrate that full sensory bonding could be established between human twins, human-animal hybrids that shared common DeoxyriboNucleic Acid (DNA), and eventually human/Na’vi hybrids with "resonant" genetic DNA/NVTranscriptase blueprints. Since the Na’vi cellular nucleus organelle does not use nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) to encode genetic information, producing a ‘translation table’ that matched a specific Human's DNA to a Na'vi NVTranscriptase equivalent closely enough to allow a level of neural resonance strong enough for congruent mental communication to occur required many months of processing on massively parallel "zettaflop" photonic computing arrays as well as many failed experiments; some of which caused severe permanent psychological trauma to volunteer subjects. Eventually the Avatar Program succeeded in producing the first viable hybrids between completely unrelated species – a considerable achievement since, as Dr Lovecraft famously remarked, humans are “far more closely related genetically to garden slugs than to Na’vi.” With the aid of thought amplification/transmission "link beds" as well as customized nanotech receiver/transmitter nodes grown into avatar brains from their earliest blastomere stage of development, human "drivers" can now operate their avatars at distances of tens of kilometers. (These distances can be reduced in areas where the Pandoran magnetic fields are very strong, such as near the many flux vortices.) Originally part of RDA’s Na’vi outreach program instigated at the behest of Earth's government authorities, the Avatar Program has moved from being a poorly-defined xenobiological experiment controlled by Earth-based bureaucrats, ivory-tower academics, and populist politicians to become a tightly-managed engineering project incorporating the most advanced technology from RDA’s research and developemt laboratories. Dr. Lovecraft has been nominated for multiple Nobel prizes in biological sciences, but the nominations have invariably been withdrawn following protests from human rights organizations, the UN Pan-Faith Council, and animal rights activists. Avatar Ingame Pandorpedia